Is Society Dead? But the Party Certainly Isn’t Over

Out of respect to the gossamer unity that is both the gathering ribbon and sometimes the rope of that disparate thing called “social life” uptown, downtown, and out of town, I have declined the best invitation of the week. (OK, maybe second best; the Valentino-Madonna-meet-Jesus party at the Standard hotel’s eighteenth floor was pretty “up there,” as Andy Warhol used to say when he was impressed with a soiree.) All your favorite boldface names have been asked . . . I don’t know who has accepted. The party that I am declining is the opportunity today, to appear “as yourself—‘Real New York High Society’ ” — in a “Black Tie Alzheimer charity event scene which is set at the Metropolitan Museum of Art” in Wall Street 2, directed by Oliver Stone and starring, among others, Michael Douglas, Josh Brolin, and the delicious Carey Mulligan(see my caricature here.) I’m a huge Oliver Stone fan, and I would have relished the opportunity to watch him work. Plus, there is nothing I like more than an idyll on a film set; it is a very diverting way of spending a day. But the following description of the scene itself gave me pause. Said an E-mail from a representative of the film: “Regarding the look I am hoping to achieve, it is likened to the ‘Last Hurrah’ of NY society, the last moment in 2008’s ‘Golden Age’ when everything was large and flowing. Oliver has used this analogy if helpful. . . . It is to appear similar to a salon on the Titanic, right before it hit the ICEBERG!!” Now, why would I want my timeless mug seen in that scene? Drowning, not waving? Besides, news of the death of society and headlines about “the party is over” appear cyclically about every five to seven years. Society isn’t dead, it is just different—and that, for this arbiter, is what keeps it interesting. Or if you prefer a more cynical explanation, there is always the classic observation of the late social columnist Igor Cassini, brother of the late fashion designer Oleg Cassini, who, when asked if he thought society was dead, answered that society will never die. Even if, God forbid, an atomic bomb dropped leaving only three people on the planet, eventually two would get together and give a party and not invite the third. Voilà! Social life. To wit: Just consider the number of Halloween parties this past weekend and days before that—specifically the evening of October 29, when there were no fewer than eleven parties I would have gone to if I’d had wings. Eleven parties! There was Bronson van Wyck’s and Celerie Kemble’s disco dance, a book signing for Grace Coddington’s The Catwalk Cats, the Landscape Revisited at the Park Avenue Armory, a party to launch Sloan-Kettering’s cookbook Park Avenue Potluck Celebrations, and Gigi Mortimer’s launch of her new accessories line, Glamourpuss NYC, to name just a few of the gilded eleven offerings that night. Society is dead? Then where’s the corpse?